Page 29 of Wanted: A Roommate Who Isn't Evil

Dranian came outside to blinding sunlight. His eyes stung like they were full of sand, and he lifted his arm to shield himself.

When he did, he saw his father and his mother waiting for him. Along with six fairies in rich-looking crimson robes, complete with expensive leather forest boots, jagged-edged pauldrons, and detailed threaded pictures of black land dragons across their chests. One of them held a flag with a family symbol Dranian didn’t recognize.

“There he is. That’s the son I was telling you about. The one who has mastered the way of the spear.” His father’s voice filled Dranian’s ears. He felt for his pocket but realizedhe didn’t have his spear with him. His father left the fairies in crimson to approach Dranian, and Dranian slowly lowered his arm.

“Father—?”

“You’ve been sold to this family as a fairy guard,” his father stated matter-of-factly. Then, too quiet for the others to hear, he said, “You have shamed me in every way possible up until now. The last thing I ever ask of you is to keep your illness contained until you’re long gone so they don’t send you back to me.”

Dranian’s mouth parted. His father’s claims didn’t sink in—they couldn’t. Because they couldn’t be true. But as Dranian perceived that his father showed no signs of remorse or regret, he placed a hand over his heart where it began to thud. And thud. And… No. He could not do this. Not now; not when his father had made this one last request of him…

“Dranian!”

His head spun toward a girl racing from the forest. She had a thin green wreath in her black hair, a bruised lip, and tears in her eyes. Dranian noticed his half-spear strapped to her waist by a belt.

His father stepped in to cut the girl off, and for the first time in his faeborn life, Dranian shoved his father aside. His father blinked in surprise as Dranian strode past him to meet the girl.

He caught her. She caught him.

They caught each other.

He wanted to tell her that he’d been sold. That this was goodbye. That his father hadn’t found a way to love him after all, just like she’d said. But words were hard, and so, she spoke for themboth.

“I’ve been sold, too,” she said. “Word spread through the village after those fairies found out about me. A passing merchant ship just purchased me as a slave. The captain went to see my mother as soon as he learned what I could do.”

“What can you do?” Dranian asked. Still, after all this time, she’d never told him. But he shook his head. Now was not the time. “What’s the name of your ship?” he asked quietly instead.

She cast him a weary smile. “You’ll never find me,” she promised. “The captain will use me to harm his enemies. I’ll be hidden away forever, probably in a cage.”

Dranian’s lip curled. “The name of your ship,” he said again, growling this time.

His parents called from behind him, making threats. His father would grab him soon if he didn’t go.

The girl looked back and forth between his eyes, seeming to change her mind. “The Mycra Sentorious,” she whispered.

Dranian filled his chest with air. “I’ll work hard, and I’ll become rich,” he promised her. “And I will find your ship and purchase your freedom. Just hang on until then.”

Dranian was torn back from her, and she was yanked the other way by the fairies in crimson. A series of hands shuffled Dranian through tall grass until he was lifted and thrown onto a reindeer. His wrists were tied and tethered to the deer’s antlers so he couldn’t escape.

He looked back at the girl with no name, at hischildling home, at his village. He took it all in one last time as he was led away by a cavalcade of deer and beasts that would take him to his new home.

Four weeks later, Dranian got word the captain of the Mycra Sentorious had been driven mad with nightmares and had sunk his own ship to the bottom of the Twilight Lakes with his whole crew on board.

No one aboard the ship had survived.

Dranian spent eight years serving the House of Lyro, being mistreated only until Shayne Lyro, the heir apparent, decided that no fairy should be allowed to torment his fairy guard but him. The spoiled, white-haired Lord only needed to hand out a few punishments of his own—laughter-driven rampages involving the tearing out of tongues, the throwing of enchanted daggers, and the shoving of disobedient fools off the pagoda—for his new rule to stick. This one single grace gave Dranian the courage to survive; it was the security that made him have no reason to panic most days. And after a year of being a terrible guard in the beginning, Dranian Evelry from Ashi-Calla Village started to excel in his rolefor the first time. He became useful.

One night in his third year, he allowed himself to think of the girl with no name whom he had decided to forget about. He snuck off to the Lyro library at midnight to study “dreamslippers.” It was only then he understood the magnitude of what the girl had been and why her power was so coveted and feared. It was then he understood how her ship must have gone down, too. That she had likely drowned an entire crew, along with herself. The thought left a dreadful pang in his chest. He put the book away, along with his curiosity. At least she was at peace now. At least she would never be tormented again.

When Shayne Lyro lost his title and was sent off to the Silver Castle, Dranian had nowhere else to go. So, he followed the young Lord in secret. And there, he came upon the ward of Queene Levress; a village-born fairy like Dranian, who had risen to power from nothing. The ward’s name was Cressica Alabastian, and he was the greatest fighter Dranian had ever known in his young faeborn life. Watching him on the training grounds shifted something in Dranian’s spirit.

From that day forward, Dranian aspired to be like the great Cressica Alabastian. He swore his allegiance, vowing to give everything he had to the Prince of the North Corner, including his life, should it be required.

Never once did he regret it.

12

Luc Zelsor and the Last Thing He Wanted to See

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